Where did they get this guy? Mars? What educator doesn't know that kids in low-SES high schools come in lacking many skills they should have mastered in elementary and middle school? And, did you notice the skillful use of passive voice to obfuscate the cause of this failure, the lower schools these kids came from.

So what did they try to do? First, they tried to high better teachers, but ...

Not a single qualified teacher has signed up for West Charlotte. "That's heavy right there," Modest said, sounding stunned.

Such is the price you pay when you fail to properly educate at least the past two generations of students from these areas.

Then they switched to plan B:

As the school year draws to a close, the principal is still pushing a two-pronged mission: Get students to take responsibility for their own success. And get teachers to believe in students.

So, the students have to take responsibility for learning while the teachers don't quite have to take responsibility for teaching. They just have to "believe in students." I suppose believing is better than nothing.

I'm wondering how a student is supposed to take responsibility for learning if the teaching isn't any good. Isn't good teaching, which starts with teachers taking responsibility for teaching well, a prerequisite to any student learning?

9 comments:

SteveH
said...

If schools cannot or will not define education in any sort of tangible way, then they are not about to take on responsibility in any tangible sort of way. They think that their responsibility ends when they have brought the horse to water.

Some teachers are very earnest and hard-working. Some take on a certain level of responsibility. But this is not a school mandate that is tied to a specific curriculum and year-to-year goals. NCLB tries to do this, but the end result still comes down to the lowest common denominator expectations.

The major problem in our schools is that they will not separate kids by ability and set high enough grade-level goals for all. With full-inclusion, a school cannot define grade-level expectations and therefore, will not assume any responsibility on a full curriculum level.

Progressive education is defined as a process with minimal content and skill requirements. Beyond learning to read and doing simple math, education is poorly-defined, and the responsibility of education is in the hands of the student. They don't want schools to teach. They want students to learn.

My sister taught years ago. She told me recently, "I always felt like if my kids got a bad grade, that was a grade on me." (She's never read this website, and hasn't thought about ed politics. She just spontaneously said this.)

Not surprisingly, my sister was probably the best teacher in her school. The principal decided to start keeping track of how kids were doing in the different classes, and it turned out her kids always did the best.

Get students to take responsibility for their own success. And get teachers to believe in students.

omg

that's horrifying

Since I've been reteaching myself math for nearly two years, I've given a bit of thought to the limits of self-teaching.

I'm not sure a child can do much self-teaching at all - at least, not without a superb textbook.

I'm finally getting to material I either wasn't taught in high school, or wasn't taught very well, and it's a different ballgame - not because I'm not 'responsible,' but because, not knowing the material, I can't judge whether I'm learning it correctly now.

Obviously, I have a lot of resources to call on. I can ask questions at ktm, I can consult other books I've purchased, I may even buy a fourth algebra 1 textbook entirely as a check on what I (think) I'm learning from Saxon & Dolciani.

A middle school child can't do any of these things. A middle school child isn't even going to know that he should.

Judging from the previews for the follow-up articles, it looks like we're due for yet another round of blaming the students and ed-speak. (The Star is one of Gannett's mid-market papers, with all the superficiality that implies.) I'll be amazed if anyone interviewed bothers to point out that middle-school problems stem from elementary-school failures.

About D-Ed Reckoning

The primary problem with K-12 education today is the problem of dead reckoning--an estimate based on little or no information. We don't know what a good K-12 education system is because we've never seen one operating. A good education system is one that is capable of educating almost every child.